transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] This episode originally aired on June 22, 2020. Since then, there have been major developments in Trudy Appleby's case. Stay with us until the very end of this episode to hear the latest.

Speaker 2:
[00:22] My thought process is she left her house that day with someone she thought she could trust with every intention on returning home, and that's not what happened.

Speaker 3:
[00:33] Every day was, well, what's it gonna be today? Is it gonna be coping, the lead comes up, and I get a phone call from the police, or is it gonna be a down day where the bottom falls out? It was a dead end, and we didn't find nothing out. So for quite a long time, it was a roller coaster.

Speaker 1:
[00:51] On the morning of August 21st, 1996, Dennis Appleby left his home in Moline, Illinois, to head to work, leaving behind his 11-year-old daughter, Trudy, to spend the summer day at home. Around 9:30 AM, a neighbor saw Trudy with a man who appeared to be in his 20s, with dark curly hair wearing a baseball cap. The unidentified man was driving a silver or gray four-door sedan. Dennis came home from work that evening and was surprised to find his daughter wasn't home. He called around to his neighbors and some of Trudy's friends, but she wasn't with any of them. That is when Dennis called the police to report Trudy missing. Trudy's case went unsolved for more than 20 years. But now, investigators believe they know who is responsible for Trudy's disappearance. I'm Marissa, and from Wondery, this is episode 230 of The Vanished, Trudy Appleby's story.

Speaker 4:
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Speaker 1:
[02:57] In August of 1996, 11-year-old Trudy Appleby was enjoying the last days of summer vacation. Before starting sixth grade at Washington Elementary School in Moline, Illinois. She was looking forward to taking an 11-day trip to Utah with her dad Dennis and her older brother Sean. She had even saved up $200 as spending money for their Utah vacation. One of the people we spoke to for this story was Trudy's uncle Ray, who remembers Trudy as being an adventurous girl and a bit of a tomboy.

Speaker 3:
[03:33] I have photos of her. We went camping as a family, and she went with, and I have a couple of photos of her sitting in the tree. Another photo of her climbing out of a... We went caving, and she's climbing out of a cave. Yeah, so she was outdoors. She liked to go with us and go camping and spend time with us, the family. A lot of gatherings with, at the time, it would have been my mother and father, my grandmother, my mom's mother, and my sister and Trudy's mom and me. She had a lot of friends in her neighborhood.

Speaker 1:
[04:11] Back in 1996, Trudy's parents were no longer together, and Trudy was living with her father.

Speaker 3:
[04:18] I think she was doing okay living with her father. She had some troubles, but all in all, I think he was doing the best he could, considering he was a single parent. Oh, Brenda, boy, we miss her. She was a great mom. She did the best that she could as being in a single situation. Trudy not having a father figure when she lived with Brenda.

Speaker 1:
[04:46] We also spoke with one of Trudy's friends, Amber. She told us how she met Trudy.

Speaker 2:
[04:53] We moved into that neighborhood when I was nine. My mom actually found her in our yard. And she said, can I help you? And Trudy said, yeah, my name is Trudy. Got any kids I can play with? Then my mom said, actually, I have a daughter that's probably close to your age. And she sent me outside and that's how we met. She was a very funky little girl, very nice. Everywhere she went, she skipped pretty much. She's very sweet. We were not in the same grade, but we did go to the same school. We were actually best friends for five years. After that day that my mom sent me outside to play with her, we pretty much became inseparable after that.

Speaker 1:
[05:35] Amber vividly remembers the night before Trudy disappeared, the last time she saw her best friend.

Speaker 2:
[05:43] It was actually at my house the night before she disappeared. We played Super Nintendo. We probably either played outside, rollerblading, flashlight tag, picked on my brother. I walked her home the night before, the night of August 20th of 96. I walked her home and we did our, the same thing we always did. We called it our nightly ritual because her house was back behind a ravine. So you had to go down a really long driveway through the woods to get to her house. So I walked her halfway down a driveway. We'd count to three. I'd turn around and run back to the street. She'd turn around and ran to her house and then we'd holler at each other to let each other know that we made it. And then I went home and went to bed and woke up the next morning to my alarm clocks because we had made plans.

Speaker 1:
[06:33] Amber and Trudy had plans on the 21st, but it was summer vacation and Amber hit the snooze button on her alarm a couple of times before getting out of bed and calling Trudy.

Speaker 2:
[06:45] So, I actually woke up late, immediately tried to call her, continued to call her, no answer, no answer, no answer. And at first I thought, okay, no good deal.

Speaker 1:
[06:55] Amber told us how she found out that Trudy was missing.

Speaker 2:
[06:59] I was at my grandparents' and I don't remember if it was my stepdad or Trudy's dad that called there. I ended up talking to her dad at some point that evening. And as soon as I got up to phone with him, I looked at my mom and I was just like somebody's daughter. Her dad had noticed my number on the caller ID numerous times. When I talked to her dad and he said, nothing had gotten done, none of her chores, nothing. That's when I knew something was wrong.

Speaker 1:
[07:27] What they were able to establish happened that day was that Trudy's dad Dennis left for work that morning around 9 AM. Part of Dennis' routine was to come home from work for lunch. When he arrived home for lunch that day, Trudy wasn't there. The thing was though that Trudy was a very social girl, and it was totally normal for her to spend her summer days playing with her friends in the neighborhood. They considered their neighborhood to be safe. This was also the time before everyone had cell phones, and Trudy didn't have one for her dad to call. Without thinking too much of it, Dennis returned to work to finish up his shift. He became concerned that evening when he returned home and Trudy was nowhere to be found. He called around to all of the usual places, checking in with her friends and neighbors, but Trudy wasn't with any of them. A neighbor reported seeing Trudy earlier that day, not long after Dennis had left for work. She was seen with a man outside of her home. The neighbor described the man as Caucasian and appeared to be in his twenties, with long curly hair and he was wearing a baseball cap. The car the man was driving was described as a silver or gray four-door sedan, that looked similar to a Chevrolet celebrity. Everyone who knew Trudy believed that she would have not gotten into a car with a stranger. Also, how would a stranger have even known that she was there alone? Her house was not visible from the street. It wasn't like a stranger driving by would have seen her playing in her yard, and this was some crime of opportunity. But who would have taken Trudy? When Dennis reported Trudy missing, authorities initially believed that Trudy was a runaway. Her friends and family didn't think that she would have run away from home. Upon a search of her room, her father found that the only thing she had taken with her was her swimsuit and a towel. If she had planned to run away, why didn't she take that $200 that she had saved up for her trip to Utah? Amber told us about those first few days after Trudy disappeared.

Speaker 2:
[09:39] The aftermath was hell. The police waited at least 48 hours. They kept saying, she ran away, she's just a runaway. Because back then, that's what they did when kids, they assumed that they were automatic runaways. There weren't Amber words back then. So yeah, it was hell. Detectives, they watched our streets, they watched my mom's house, they watched everybody's houses because they really believed that she ran away. They thought that I knew where she was. So yeah, it was hell. Like I said, 48 hours after she disappeared, they talked to two of her neighbor ladies, each neighbor lady at the end of her driveway. That's when they were like, this is the kind of car we saw with an unknown male. They described to him, they said they saw Trudy in the backseat. It was just, okay, who took her? Where is she at? It was crazy.

Speaker 1:
[10:32] Trudy's uncle Ray remembers the phone call that he got from Dennis after Trudy disappeared.

Speaker 3:
[10:38] He thought that as we'd done in the past, we would make arrangements for Trudy to spend time with my side of the family. We would go to the house and go pick her up. And I think that's what he thought had happened, even though we hadn't made plans. He called my parents' house on the morning of the 22nd, wanting to know if we knew where she was at. And we didn't. That's how I found out. I guess a little bit standoffish because he was in a roundabout way, suggesting that my mom and my grandma had picked Trudy up and not told him. And in the conversation, that's how I first took it. We talked on the phone for quite a few minutes. And then I explained to him that my sister, Brenda, and her husband were camping with my mom, and I would go and contact them and get a hold of them. Of course, there was no cell phones and there was no way to get a hold of them. I went to the campground and get them and told them what was going on, and they came straight home.

Speaker 1:
[11:42] Ray also remembers the police initially assuming that Trudy had run away.

Speaker 3:
[11:48] He reported her on the night of the 21st, but I don't think the police did anything until the next day on the 22nd. Yeah, they thought she ran away because all they had was a small lead about a gray car. They hypothetically thought that it could have been her leaving with a boyfriend or with somebody. They were supposed to leave on a vacation to Salt Lake City, and they talked about that a lot. They were going to go on that trip. It would have been Dennis Trudy and Dennis' son Sean. Within a few days of the disappearance, they kind of gathered that they were going to leave that weekend, maybe, when you were asking about the time frame about how things happened. To him, that's what sticks out, is that we were supposed to leave. He was trying to defend why people are saying that she ran away. He's saying no, she wouldn't have ran away, because she was looking forward to, as much as I was, taking this trip to Utah and going on vacation.

Speaker 1:
[12:46] As time went on, authorities began to realize that Trudy was not a runaway. But they didn't have much more to go on beyond the sighting of that man and the car. They checked in with sex offenders in the neighborhood, and several of Trudy's family members took polygraph tests, which they passed. They got the FBI involved, and Trudy's story was featured on national television programs like America's Most Wanted and the Gerardo Rivera show. Days and weeks passed without any tangible leads. Trudy would have turned 12 on September 4th, just a couple of weeks after her disappearance. Her birthday came and went with no word from Trudy. Months and then years passed with Trudy's case remaining cold. Her parents became frustrated with the situation. With no suspects to point to, they began pointing the finger at each other, about who was to blame for what happened to Trudy. Trudy's father wondered if someone on her mom's side of the family had taken her, while Trudy's mother pointed to Dennis' wild past when he was young, in his associations with some unsavory friends. Ray felt like investigators were wasting time looking at his family instead of looking elsewhere.

Speaker 3:
[14:04] What I remember is the days following, spending quite a bit of time at the police station, my mother, father, my grandmother, me, defending ourselves and trying to explain ourselves where we were, what we were doing and why we had nothing to do with it. While they were wasting time looking at the wrong people, looking at my family, looking at people in my family, trying to get it out of them, what happened. They're wasting time while the guy driving that gray car was covering up his tracks and hiding what he did.

Speaker 1:
[14:41] Amber told us that she had always hoped that Trudy would return alive. She had no clue who would have taken her best friend or why. Was there a predator living in their neighborhood? Amber recalled a frightening incident that happened the winter after Trudy disappeared.

Speaker 2:
[14:59] That winter, actually, I got up to use the restroom. I had to walk past the patio door at my mom's to leave my bedroom. There was a person standing on the other side of our fence. Mind you, this is middle of the night. Here I am. I had just turned 14. I was 13 when she disappeared, but by this time I had just turned 14. Here's somebody dressed in all black, standing on the other side of my fence in my backyard. I immediately woke up my mother. We called the police. They came, nothing but footprints in the snow. It was none of the neighbors. To this day, we still don't know who it was.

Speaker 5:
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Speaker 1:
[17:00] The years continued to pass with Trudy's fate remaining a mystery. In 2014, Trudy's mother Brenda Gordon passed away after being hit by a drunk driver as she crossed the street. Brenda's brother Ray told us about her struggles after the disappearance of her daughter.

Speaker 3:
[17:19] You never really know what it does to a person until you've gone through it. It changed Brenda, it changed her in many ways. In the last few years of her life, she got herself straightened out, she returned to her faith in God, and that helped her a lot in dealing with the anxiety and depression of losing her daughter. For 15 years, she just went through highs and lows of, there was something going to happen, we thought we found something, oh no, we didn't. Every August 21st, the whole week of August 21st is really hard for everybody, but that would just be her worst week of the whole year. Like I said, when she turned herself, turned her faith towards God and that helped her a lot. Brenda's mind was really going from one end to the other. Who could have done it? Where could she have gone? Whoever has her, can you just give her back? It's just mentally draining, and it was hard to see her as a mother, and to go through that.

Speaker 1:
[18:25] In 2015, the case was assigned to a new detective, Michael Griffin. Over the next couple of years, they were able to develop some persons of interest in the case.

Speaker 3:
[18:36] We didn't know then what we know now. They have given us a lot more information about their primary suspect, suspects, as the years passed and more information came out. And we know things now that we didn't know then. You kind of know that she's not coming home. But at that time, it was easy for us to hold out hope that she would come home eventually. And that's what Brenda was holding on to. And every day was, well, what's it going to be today? Is it going to be hoping the lead comes up and I get a phone call from the police, or is it going to be a down day where the bottom falls out and it was a dead end and we didn't find nothing out. So for quite a long time, it was it was a roller coaster.

Speaker 1:
[19:21] For this story, we had the opportunity to speak with Detective Michael Griffin. He told us more about his career in law enforcement.

Speaker 6:
[19:29] My name is Michael Griffin. I'm a detective with the Moline Illinois Police Department. I've been here about 16 years. I'm probably one of the 9-11 law enforcement people. I saw what the cops and firefighters done 9-11. I thought it was heroic and I wanted to try to do a life of service like I saw on TV that day. I just thought everything that they did and everything that firefighters and police officers still do is a wonderful service to the community. So I wanted to do my part. At the time, I had graduated college with a journalism degree and I didn't feel like journalism was doing my part. I wrote for a newspaper and felt like there's more. So here I am.

Speaker 1:
[20:16] We asked Detective Griffin if he could walk us through the early days of the investigation into Trudy's disappearance.

Speaker 6:
[20:24] So she's reported to us as missing on August 21st, 1996. Her dad had come home from work, saw that she wasn't home like she was supposed to be, did the normal thing, checked with neighbors, checked with friends, checked with Trudy's mom and dad were not married. So he checked with her mom, her mom's relatives. After exhausting all those, they called the police to report her as missing. So when we have a missing child, depending on the age, depending on medical history and like that, if it's a significantly at risk, almost everyone in the department drops what they're doing. And they go out and look. We can buy that with a media push, social media push. But in 1996, obviously, things were different. At first, you know, an officer goes up there and check the residence, make sure, see if there's anything that is apparently criminally at foot, or we make sure it's not a runaway situation. And once we realize that, that's criminal, they get turned over to a detective for follow up. They did, I mean, over the years, they've done, the police department's done thousands of follow ups, thousands of interviews, followed up on thousands of tips, and it's all come back to the same people. So everything that can be done has been done. We just haven't got the lucky break. You know, the people, we know, we reasonably know who did it. They know, we know, we've interviewed them, but they haven't said anything. And to this point, they've gotten lucky because we haven't found her body. I think initially dad thought that maybe mom had something to do with it, and took her somewhere else. So that's not the case.

Speaker 1:
[21:59] In 2017, the police publicly identified two persons of interest in Trudy's case. One of them was William Ed Smith. Unfortunately, Ed had died several years prior. The other person is Ed's son-in-law, David Whipple, who was friends with Trudy's dad. Detective Griffin told us more about these men.

Speaker 6:
[22:21] Ed dead. Yeah, Ed died in 2014 and he went to hell. And that's where he remains to this day. And he will likely never get to leave there. You can air that. I don't care. Dave has given interviews over the years. The last one recently was in 2017. I interviewed him myself for about five hours. He gives about half truths, quarter truths. Obviously, he doesn't say that he had anything to do with it, but he puts himself as a witness, but we don't believe that to be true. Trudy was friends with Dave's daughter. So Dave and Trudy's dad were friends, but Trudy and Dave's daughter were also friends. Dave's still alive. Ed was 70s. They get to live a full life, unfortunately.

Speaker 1:
[23:04] So Trudy was friends with David Whipple's daughter, and Trudy had gone out boating with their family in the past. It has been theorized that they took Trudy out boating that day and something happened, whether it was an accident or something intentional. This lines up with the fact that the only things Trudy took with her were a towel and her swimsuit. Amber recalls Trudy asking to go boating with these people shortly before she disappeared.

Speaker 2:
[23:31] And she had just asked her dad the day before if she could go swimming with this family. And he said no. So my personal opinion is they showed up at her house. Said, oh yeah, we talked to your daddy, said we could pick you up. She went, got in the car willingly. Or maybe she didn't get in the car willingly. I'm not sure if it's not an answer I'll ever have. But I do believe that I want to think that she got in the car willingly. Thinking, okay, you know, this is somebody that I know, I'm friends with this family, their children. But I do know that if she did leave willingly that day, that she had every intention on returning home. And that's not what happened.

Speaker 1:
[24:13] The theory that law enforcement has developed is that even though her father had told her no, that Trudy ended up leaving to go swimming with this family. David Whipple told police that he witnessed his father-in-law, William Ed Smith, in a vehicle similar to the one seen at Trudy's home by a witness. Whipple claims that he saw Ed near his residence in East Moline on Campbell's Island, with a young girl he believed to be Trudy. Remember, Trudy knew David Whipple and was friends with his daughter, so it's likely that he would recognize Trudy. Throughout the course of their investigation, they found that Ed was known to frequent the area of Blackbird Island or Dynamite Island, which are only accessible by boat and are on the northern edge of Campbell's Island. Law enforcement also learned that the car that Ed had that matched the description of the one seen at Trudy's home that morning was scrapped in the days following Trudy's disappearance. Trudy's Uncle Ray told us about more information linking Trudy to these persons of interest.

Speaker 3:
[25:18] The phone records show that there was a couple of phone calls to the time and temp number. Back in the day, you used to be able to call a phone number and find out the exact time and the temperature in the Quad Cities. Yeah, I just made myself look old. And there was one or two phone calls from the house of David Whipple. And they were in the morning, nine-ish, ten-ish. I believe it was they were incoming calls. It was within a week to ten days that we now know that that family took that car to a salvage yard and scrapped it, the gray car. Whipple said he saw Ed Smith with Trudy, and they were going to procure a life vest to go boating.

Speaker 1:
[26:10] Ray remembers that back when this all began, after Dennis realized that Trudy wasn't with anyone on her mom's side of the family, that Dennis had immediately been suspicious of Whipple and Smith.

Speaker 3:
[26:22] At that time, Dennis says that he was trying to explain to them his suspicions. He suspected them. Right off the bat, he suspected David Whipple and Ed Smith. Yeah, when he knew that we had nothing to do with it, it was right away he was suspecting them. How long it took the police to get on that? I couldn't tell you. In my opinion, it took too long because, like I said, he was covering his tracks. They destroyed the car, any DNA evidence. So they had a boat that this family would take out boating all the time on them. That was probably the pretense on how they got Trudy to go with them that morning, was you want to go boating, you want to go swimming, whatever, because she took her bathing suit and that's about all she took with her. Her personal belongings were still at the house. This boat that they used, just like they use this car all the time, was a worthy car to keep, they use this boat all the time. Just like the car, the boat disappeared. They took the boat and they hid it in a barn for, I was told, 14 years. Then when they did find the boat, when the police tracked down the boat, the family no longer had it, they had sold it. So the police had to track it down to whoever bought it, and the boat had been wrecked and rebuilt. So the worry was the damage to the boat where they had to repair all the, repair the boat was where the DNA evidence might have been. But we did end up getting the boat. They took it to an FBI crime lab in Silver, in Springfield, Illinois. I haven't heard any results. One of the biggest hopes that I've had in a long time, it was one of the, heck yeah, that's, they're going to find something on that. Because if they don't, I don't know what else there could be. Dennis, here two decades later, he hates them because Dennis believes deep in his heart that they are the ones that are 100% responsible for Trudy not being with us. I'm sure he felt that way on day two.

Speaker 1:
[28:29] When we spoke with the detective, we asked about the testing that was done on the boat.

Speaker 6:
[28:35] It's still being processed. We got close to 500 buckle swabs of evidence off of it. So it obviously takes a significant amount of time.

Speaker 1:
[28:44] It's also important to note here that David Whipple is a registered sex offender. In 2002, he pleaded guilty to sexual abuse of a family member who was between the ages of 10 and 11 years old when the assaults happened back in 1996 and 1997. It's worth noting that Trudy was 11 in 1996 when those assaults occurred. The same age as his other victim. When Whipple was arrested for these sex crimes in 2002, Trudy's dad spoke to the press about his suspicions that Whipple could have been involved in Trudy's disappearance because she knew Whipple and was friends with his daughter. But Dennis' concerns didn't seem to gain much traction at the time, and it would be another 15 years before police made their announcement. In a 2017 interview with a local ABC affiliate, David Whipple stated that there was sexual abuse within Ed Smith's family, and he believed Ed was capable of harming Trudy. What remains unclear is if Ed acted alone or if David Whipple was involved as well. Investigators seem to believe that he was somehow involved. Detective Griffin told us what he thinks happened to Trudy on August 21, 1996.

Speaker 6:
[30:03] I think she left the house voluntarily because she thought she was going to go play with her friend. But then she was, the innocence of her youth thinking she's going to go play with her friend was quickly met by criminals and a criminal mindset and she was not able to get out of it. She's only 11 years old at the time. So they took advantage of her and she was going to tell her dad what they had done. So they silenced her by killing her. She was taken advantage of by adults that you're 11 years old, you're naive, you're young, you're innocent, it's the way it's supposed to be. When you have an adult offender that has a criminal mindset, they look for prey and what's easier prey than our youth? I mean, they're young, they're innocent. So these people took advantage of this and that's what it is. And, you know, she got put into an adult situation by criminal adults. And you know, you wouldn't expect an 11-year-old to be able to get out of that situation. And she wasn't, she's a victim in every sense of the word here. What's publicly available online is that they both have certain terms of imprisonment. And that Whipple is a registered sex offender.

Speaker 1:
[31:26] For Amber, after learning about the theory that law enforcement has developed, she no longer holds out hope that Trudy is coming home alive.

Speaker 2:
[31:35] It wasn't until I became an adult and Detective Griffin took over the case that I realized that she probably was never going to come home. And if she was, it wasn't going to be alive.

Speaker 1:
[31:49] Detective Griffin told us where to call if you have any information about what happened to Trudy.

Speaker 6:
[31:55] I guarantee there's people that listen to your show from this area that know what happened and that haven't talked to us. You know, anything we'd appreciate if they'd come forward to anyone with any information, help us solve this case. They can call the Police Department directly or they can call Crime Stoppers. Crime Stoppers is 309-762-9500 and all their information will be anonymous.

Speaker 1:
[32:38] Ray believes that it's possible that there are others out there who may have witnessed what happened to Trudy, or had some level of involvement in her disappearance or subsequent cover-up of what occurred.

Speaker 3:
[32:49] There's a couple other people that are involved in the case that are friends of the family, and their names have came up a few times, and they've had them in jail on other charges, and tried to get them to roll over on the family, that you had something to do with it, you had a part in it somehow, and they can't get these people to roll over either. Just give us something.

Speaker 1:
[33:17] Ray is a member of an organization that assists with missing persons cases, and he told us about how he went out to search the area where Ed and David lived.

Speaker 3:
[33:27] I'm part of a missing persons network, so we do search and rescue for missing people that are lost. The detective on the case asked my director if we would assist them and go out on the island that these people lived on. In the middle of the Mississippi River in this town is an island, and this island has about, I'm going to say about 50 houses on it. We went out on the island and specified towards the neighborhood that Whipple and Ed Smith lived in. They were neighbors. Not only were they in-laws, they were neighbors. And we hit every house and talked to every person and gave them flyers. And the whole thing is trying to get the people involved to feel uncomfortable and get them to start squirming the cadaver dogs. They searched the island and they led the detectives to an empty lot. And they ended up digging a large hole on that lot. Guess whose house used to be on that lot? David Whipple. But they did not find anything conclusive. And one of the people that's in my search and rescue group has told me that dog only knows how to follow the scent of decaying flesh. And that they could have been hidden on a bone 200 years ago, or it could have been something from Trudy.

Speaker 1:
[34:57] Trudy's uncle Ray told us more about how he feels about Trudy's disappearance after nearly 24 years.

Speaker 3:
[35:04] For me, it pisses me off that somebody can do something to another human being. And for one thing, not tell anybody and not, and continue to hold this as a secret inside of them. And it also pisses me off that somebody could do something to a child. And Trudy was only 11 years old, and they took away her innocence. They took away her future. They took away her future that she had with us. They took her away from us. If you would have asked me 20 years ago how long I thought it was going to last, I would have said, I don't know. But I would have never thought we'd still be here at this point.

Speaker 1:
[35:48] Despite his frustrations about Trudy's case being unsolved after so many years, Ray is much more interested in finding Trudy and laying her to rest than justice being served.

Speaker 3:
[36:00] At this point, we're just looking for closure. And I'll agree, if nobody goes to jail, that's fine. But my family, the Edelman plot, has a plot at the cemetery and is reserved for Trudy. And we're just waiting until the day that we can place her there and lay her to rest. My sister's already there and Trudy would be buried next to Brenda. As tough as it is, her public opinion would say, how can they just let that guy off? If that's the only way we can get it, then we'll take what we can get. But it just blows my mind, like I said in the beginning, how somebody can do something to another human being. And then, where is she at? Did they put her in the river? Did they bury her? Did they go out on one of the islands in Mississippi and hide her? It just blows my mind where she could be. And in the beginning, in the days after I answered the phone and Dennis called me and wanted to know if I knew where she was at. And then talking to the police, I had this feeling in my gut that all I wanted to do was forget about work, forget about everything, just get in the car and go look for Trudy. But you have this empty feeling because you don't know which way they went. And at that time, we didn't know that. Now we are pretty sure that she never left Campbell's Island. But at that time, could she have gone east, west, north, south? We don't know which way out of the cloth city she could have went.

Speaker 1:
[37:35] So what happened to Trudy Appleby on the morning of August 21st, 1996? We know that Trudy had plans with Amber that day. But Amber overslept and by the time she woke up, Trudy was no longer home. Trudy's dad left for work that morning and then a neighbor spotted Trudy getting into a silver or gray car with a man. That evening, her father reported Trudy missing after returning home from work, and finding Trudy missing along with her swimsuit and towel. Trudy's case went cold for many years. But just a few years ago, police went public with their suspicions, naming Ed Smith and David Whipple. Ed was deceased by this time, but David is still alive and living in the area. David is Ed's son-in-law and the family owned a vehicle that was similar to the one that witnesses saw Trudy leave in. Also, Ray told us that phone records indicate that there were communications between them and Trudy that morning. Trudy had asked her dad if she could go swimming with these people just the day before. Everything seems to line up with Trudy leaving with one of them under the pretense of going out on their boat and swimming that day. Something that she had done before. And she was comfortable with these people because she was friends with David Whipple's daughter. Did some kind of accident occur that was covered up? Or was something more sinister happening here? David Whipple is a registered sex offender who was abusing a child the same age as Trudy around the time she disappeared. Is that merely a coincidence? There have been claims that Ed Smith also abused children within his family. Did one or both of them come up with a scheme to lure Trudy under the guise of swimming with her friend? Something any 11-year-old kid would be excited to do on a hot summer day. But instead of swimming, did they intend on assaulting her? It's a terrible scenario to think about, and also understandable why the detective feels so strongly about this case. Those who love Trudy haven't stopped pressing for answers as to what happened back in August of 96. Hopefully with new technology and the discovery of the boat, they'll be able to find some new evidence to move this case forward. If you have any information about the disappearance of Trudy Appleby, please call the Moline Police Department at 309-524-2140.

Speaker 2:
[40:06] But I've had to raise my kids. I could know that even if one of my relatives shows up at school to get them, if I didn't tell them that they are being picked up, they're not going with anyone. This has actually affected my children, and it has also affected Trudy's little cousins. So it's affected more than one generation. It's actually affected one, two, three, four, five generations. Because when she went missing, I believe her great-grandmother was still alive, her grandparents, her parents, then our generation, and now the new generation.

Speaker 3:
[40:48] It just, it really hurts that she's somewhere and we can't find her, and we just want to lay her to rest and bury her. My sister died not knowing where her daughter was at, and that's not fair. That's just not fair for a parent to have to go through that and then to pass away not knowing the truth.

Speaker 1:
[41:40] There have been major developments in Trudy Appleby's case since this episode originally aired in June of 2020. In the original episode, we discussed two men investigators had publicly identified as persons of interest, William Ed Smith and his son-in-law, David Whipple. Police believe that Trudy likely left that morning believing she was going swimming with people she knew. Trudy had spent time with the family before, was friends with David Whipple's daughter, and had asked her father the day before she could go swimming with them. Witnesses saw Trudy getting into a gray or silver sedan, similar to one owned by Ed Smith. That car was later scrapped just days after Trudy disappeared. In 2020, a couple of months after the original episode aired, investigators publicly identified a third person of interest, Jamison Jamie Fisher. Fisher was described as a longtime friend of Ed Smith, and someone closely connected to both Smith and David Whipple. For years, investigators continued to search for evidence. They tracked down and tested an old boat, searched properties connected to the men, and continued interviewing witnesses. In 2023, investigators dug up a yard connected to the case, looking for Trudy's remains, but those efforts didn't turn up any clues. Then, in August of 2025, nearly 29 years after Trudy disappeared, a Henry County grand jury indicted Jamison Fisher on three counts of first-degree murder, and one count of concealment of a homicidal death. Prosecutors alleged that Fisher strangled Trudy and concealed her body. Court documents filed in the months after Fisher was charged, shed more light on why investigators believe Fisher was involved, and how he fits into the theory that was discussed in the original episode. According to prosecutors, Fisher was part of the same circle surrounding Ed Smith and David Whipple. Court records allege that both Fisher and Whipple sold methamphetamine together in the mid 1990s, around the time that Trudy disappeared. Prosecutors said Trudy's father owed a drug debt, and that Trudy was taken because of it. The court filings also allege that Fisher admitted his involvement to multiple people over the years. One witness said Fisher told him that he took a little girl, because Trudy's father owed him money. Another said Fisher later admitted that Trudy had been killed near a train bridge by a mobile home park. A third witness said Fisher bragged that he murdered Trudy by choking her, then disposed of her body. One witness said that in 1996 she saw Fisher carrying what appeared to be the lifeless body of a young girl off of a boat. Other witnesses described Fisher's connection to the gray vehicle discussed in the original episode. According to the filings, Fisher's driver at the time said he drove him around that summer in a silver Chevy Cavalier. The driver said he turned the vehicle over to Fisher shortly before Trudy disappeared and never saw it again. Prosecutors believe that may have been the car witnesses saw a car in Trudy's house. One witness who claimed Fisher confessed to her shortly after Trudy vanished also claimed that he had dismantled a silver Chevrolet Cavalier at her apartment. Several of the witnesses prosecutors plan to call at trial have said they didn't come forward for many years because they were afraid. According to the court filings, some feared Fisher and the other men connected to the case, while others said they were traumatized by what they had seen. The woman who said she witnessed Fisher carrying a body of a young girl off of a boat in 1996, said that she suffered nightmares for years and was afraid to tell anyone. Prosecutors argue that fear and trauma surrounding the case help explain why so many of these witnesses stayed silent for decades. William Ed Smith died in 2014. David Whipple died in 2022. Jameson Fisher is the first and only person to be charged in Trudy's case. Investigators still haven't found Trudy's remains. And while there may have finally been an arrest, Trudy's loved ones are still waiting for the answer they've needed for nearly three decades. Where is Trudy? That brings us to the end of episode 230. I'd like to thank everyone who spoke with us for this story. If you have a missing loved one that you'd like to have featured on the show, there's a case submission form at thevanishedpodcast.com. If you'd like to join the discussion, there's a page and discussion group on Facebook and also on Instagram. If you enjoy this show, subscribe now and leave a five-star view on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening right now. Thanks for listening. Follow The Vanished on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to all episodes of The Vanished ad free by joining Audible.